Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Easter, ee cummings, Holy Week, lenten journey, pilgrimage, poetry
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
- ee cummings
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: helen waddell, Holy Week, journey, lenten journey, passion, peter abelard, pilgrimage, prayer, suffering
The rabbit stopped shrieking when the stooped over it, either from exhaustion, or in some last extremity of fear. Thibault held the teeth of the trap apart, and Abelard gathered up the little creature in his hands. It lay for a moment breathing quickly, then in some blind recognition of the kindness that had met it at the last, the small head thrust and nestled against his arm, and it died.
It was that last confiding thrust that broke Abelard’s heart. He looked down at the little draggled body, his mouth shaking. ‘Thibault,’ he said, ‘do you think there is a God at all? Whatever has come to me, I earned it. But what did this one do?’
Thibault nodded.
‘I know,’ he said, “Only, I think God is in it too.’
Abelard look sharply.
‘In it? Do you mean that it makes him suffer, the way it does us?’
Thibault nodded.
‘Then why doesn’t he stop it?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Thibault. ‘Unless it’s like the prodigal son. I suppose the father could have kept him at home against his will. But what would have been the use? All this,’ he stroked the limp body, ‘is because of us. But all the time God suffers. More than we do.’
Abelard looked at him, perplexed. ‘Thibault, do you mean Calvary?’
Thibault shook his head. ‘That was only a piece of it – the piece that we say- in time. Like that.’ He pointed to a fallen tree beside them, sawn through the middle. ‘That dark ring there, it foes hp and down the whole length of the tree. But you only see it where it is cut across. That is what Christ’s life was; the bit of God that we saw. And we think God is like that, because was like that, kind and forgiving sins and healing people. We think God is like that for ever, because it happened once, with Christ. But not the pain. Not the agony at the last. We think that stopped.’
Abelard looked at him, the blunt nose and the wide mouth, the honest troubled eyes. He could have knelt before him.
‘Then, Thibault,’ he said slowly, ‘you think that all of this,’ he looked down at the little quiet body in his arms, ‘all the pain of the world, was Christ’s cross?’
‘God’s cross,’ said Thibault, ‘And it goes one.
- From Peter Abelard by Helen Waddell
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Good Friday, Holy Week, Lent, lenten journey, pilgrimage, poetry, prayer, wh vanstone
Drained is love in making full;
Bound in setting others free;
Poor in making many rich;
Weak in giving power to be.
- WH Vanstone
Good Friday:
torture, suffering, execution, death, sacrifice, love
and a reminder that the spiritual is the political.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Holy Week, Lent, lenten journey, passion, pilgrimage, poetry
Suddenly
that moment of unsought grace
exhausted stress departing
moving into depth
experience of
Passion.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Holy Week, Lent, lenten journey, passion, pilgrimage, poetry, prayer
At the moment of consecration
the priest’s fingers were ingrained with oil
from mending a puncture.
So much more
than purity of clean withdrawal.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Holy Week, justice, Kingdom of God, Lent, lenten journey, passion
Some questions for Holy Week and life beyond it:
Facing up to
the time of difficulty
the time of pain
the time of suffering
Is it really the witness of our lives
that love is stronger than hate
life is stronger than death?
that the world can be remade?
Do we have the capacity
to live generously, humbly
and with the imagination required of us?
Now the green blade rises from the buried grain,
Wheat that in the dark earth many years has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.
In the grave they laid Him, Love Whom we had slain,
Thinking that He’d never wake to life again,
Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.
Up He sprang at Easter, like the risen grain,
He that for three days in the grave had lain;
Up from the dead my risen Lord is seen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.
When our hearts are saddened, grieving or in pain,
By Your touch You call us back to life again;
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.
John MC Crum
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Good Friday, Holy Week, stations of the cross, the Cross
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Easter, Good Friday, Holy Week, Maundy Thursday, passion, poetry, wh vanstone
A HYMN TO THE CREATOR
by William H. Vanstone
Morning glory, starlit sky,
Leaves in springtime, swallows’ flight,
Autumn gales, tremendous seas,
Sounds and scents of summer night;
Soaring music, tow’ring words,
Art’s perfection, scholar’s truth,
Joy supreme of human love,
Memory’s treasure, grace of youth;
Open, Lord, are these, Thy gifts,
Gifts of love to mind and sense;
Hidden is love’s agony,
Love’s endeavour, love’s expense.
Love that gives gives ever more,
Gives with zeal, with eager hands,
Spares not, keeps not, all outpours,
Ventures all, its all expends.
Drained is love in making full;
Bound in setting others free;
Poor in making many rich;
Weak in giving power to be.
Therefore He Who Thee reveals
Hangs, O Father, on that Tree
Helpless; and the nails and thorns
Tell of what Thy love must be.
Thou are God; no monarch Thou
Thron’d in easy state to reign;
Thou art God, Whose arms of love
Aching, spent, the world sustain.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Holy Week, jesus on the cross road, john austen, paul hill, pilgrimage, st gabriel's weoley castle, stations of the cross
This is a moving set of Stations of the Cross, helping us to walk with Christ in the Way of the Cross.
This is one of Paul Hill’s remarkable Stations from St Cuthbert, Castle Vale in Birmingham (although in Coventry Cathedral in the photograph). They are in the book Jesus on the Cross Road by Paul Hill and John Austen which we used last week at St Gabriel’s. If anyone knows where to get more copies of the book, please let me know.
